Fact and Prejudice How to Communicate with Esoterics, Fanatics and Conspiracy Believers

When having coffee with your family, you are offered energized water. On Twitter you discuss with vaccination opponents. The WhatsApp kitagroup discusses zodiac signs, the pharmacy sells you globules, the neighbor proselytizes for her guru, and the news is once again about demonstrations by right-wing extremists.

Everywhere you encounter conspiracy myths, superstition, esotericism, pseudoscience and Co. and you want to respond to them - while remaining as factual as possible, clarify your position, provide facts, but also not unnecessarily provoke or overload. In addition, you do not want to hurt your counterpart, but to encourage him to rethink. But how do you do that?

If you are asking yourself this question, read "Fact and Prejudice". Understand why we are driven by emotions and most information bounces off us. Read experiences and tips from interviews with professional (science) communicators. Then follow different people through their own rethinking processes: What convinces an alternative medicine practitioner to leave non-evidence-based medicine behind? What was the deciding factor for a former vaccination opponent to have her children vaccinated after all? What helps members of appropriative organizations to get out? What moves a celebrated medium to break away from esotericism?

This book is for anyone who worries about or doesn't know how to communicate with people who have irrational worldviews - whether it's with family, friends, anonymously on the Internet, or at work. The authors give concrete tips on discussions and situations and also help to decide when it is important to engage and when it is better to withdraw.

The authors

Holm Hümmler studied physics and completed his doctorate at the Max Planck Institute for Physics in Munich. Longer research stays took him to CERN in Geneva and Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York. He now works independently as a management consultant. Heis involved in the skeptics' organization GWUP and gives lectures and writes articles on, among other things, frontier areas of physics, esotericism in business and martial arts, and technological conspiracy theories. He has already published "Relativer Quantenquark- Kann die moderne Physik die Esoterik belegen?

Ulrike Schiesser studied psychology at the University of Vienna and completed psychotherapy training in systemic family therapy. As an employee of the Federal Agency for Sectarian Issues, she is an expert on conflicts in the field of esotericism, on personality cults, authoritarian and appropriating group structures and conspiracy theories. She accompanies people through processes of rethinking and change and advises concerned relatives on communication strategies.